tendencies
by Audrey
Summary: What if Aeris came back and everything wasn't hunky dory? What if Cloud decided to get freakishly obsessive, Tifa became caustically, psychotically vengeful, Vincent became a stalker with bloodied weapons, and Aeris is witness to a growing list of murders
1. Default Chapter

...tendencies. (a story about obsession).

Dead.

Buried. Awash in a sea of azure coffin silks.

6 feet under...water?

"Aeris?"

"Cloud?"

Cloud's blinked, eyes rimmed with the red of sleeplessness and obsession opening to the striking blue of a "fatal error" computer screen. He turned around blearily, wiping sleep from his eyes. Tifa stood before him, robe clutched around her body as she squinted at him. "Jesus Christ, Cloud, it's 4 in the morning. Come to bed already."

Cloud stared blankly at her for a bit, then shook himself out of his trance. He pawed at his face, blearily mumbling. "Right... ok Teef, just gimme a sec while I finish reading these papers..." He fumbled absently through the piles of scattered printouts and books and clipped articles, papers flying off the table like wounded wings as he frantically flipped. "See, this guy here has some theory that if you uh...make some chemical combination involving Phoenix Down and Cure materia, you can restore life, because, see, the materia allows the phoenix down to absorb and-"

His ramblings were stopped short by the soft lips of his lover pressed against his in a gentle kiss. "Cloud, c'mon honey. It's late." 

He found his arms slipping around her waist, pulling her pliable body into his lap. He inhaled, savoring the soft aroma of flowers in her hair. Tifa wrapped her arms around his neck, shut her eyes and leaned her head against his strong shoulder. In his arms, she felt safe, she felt serene, she felt--

"So I was thinking that tomorrow I would head on out to the Forbidden City again with some supplies and, you know, give it another shot. I mean, I know that the Cure materia didn't work on its own, and the Phoenix Down didn't work on its own, and they didn't work together in that one other way I tried it, and the potion didn't work, but I just think that the law of averages should say that-"

Tifa stood up. "My GOD, Cloud. Will you just...just...stop it? Law of averages? It's been two years, Cloud. You've been trying two f*cking years...and I, I've had to stand by and watch you do this. No matter how hard you try, Cloud, you are not going to be able to raise the dead, ever." She tried to glare at the man, but his blue eyes so brimming with sorrow dug into her soul. She sighed, dropping to her knees in front of him, clasping his hands in hers. "Look Cloud, Aeris is just dead."

Cloud opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again.

"Aeris died," Tifa continued, " A long, long time ago. Sephiroth killed her, and she's not coming back. Not now, not ever. You can't do anything about that. I know it's hard, honey, but you're just going to have to face it. Understand?" she said, her voice pleading and earnest. 

Cloud sat for a long time in silence. "Yeah..." he said. "Yeah, I understand."

Tifa smiled.

"I understand now," he said softly. "You're jealous that I care this much. You've always been jealous of Aeris, of the attention I paid her. But Tifa, it doesn't matter. I made a mistake, and I've got to fix that. I'm sorry you had to go through this Teef, but I'd've done the same if it where you on the bottom of that lake." He pushed on, continuing to speak, though his love's jaw had dropped in an expression of betrayal and shock. "I...I'm leaving now, Tifa. I'm going to the Forbidden City, and...and if you don't want to take me in when I come back, that's fine, too."

She kept staring at him, frozen in place.

He compulsively gathered all the papers, books, and stuffed them messily into a bag with his sword. Still half-asleep, he pulled on his boots, clomping loudly towards the door. "Cloud!" Tifa cried out, muscles suddenly thawing in the desperation. "Wait!"

He stopped and turned around. 

"I....I..." Tifa swallowed. "Never mind," she said, no words to convey her thoughts, as she went limp and fell in a chair, hopelessly. He nodded once, and stepped out once more. Seconds later, the door swung open again, and, he came back in. "I...I love you Tifa."

She merely stared vacantly, eyes focused on the space beyond the wall. 

"I'll be back...with Aeris," he said, and this time he shut the door behind him for good. 

And Tifa cried.

***

Someday, the voices whispered to her, he'd find her and wake her.

Someday soon...

The waves washed over the tomb, sweeping the grave site clean; not a drop of blood polluted the girl's deathbed.

....lake...bed?

TBC. 

_Sorry if it's a bit boring. It will get freakier and more exciting someday. Someday soon. ~_^ Next chapter, even._

_-audrey_


	2. Fibonacci Sequence

...tendencies. (a story about obsession).

Chapter 2: Fibonacci Sequence.

_Viiiiiincent..._

_Hello, Vincent._

Swimming in a sea of green.

Floating in a watery waiting room.

Dead. Asleep. Dreaming.

"Vincent!"

As he had, every day for 30 some years, Vincent woke up with the name 'Lucrecia' whispered upon his lips.

He didn't open his eyes, as he lay in the sparse bed at the back of the cave, the waterfall thundering around him.

He didn't open his eyes because he didn't want to, because there was nothing in this world that existed that he wanted to see...nothing except _her_ face, and that was gone, gone forever. 

"Yes, Cloud," he answered quietly, sitting up and pulling his shirt over his head, over his claw. "What do you want?" His tone added the implied word "now" to the end of his question.

Cloud winced as Vincent's now sightless eyes turned to him, the entirety of the eye a fluid, painful crimson. Cloud had no idea what the other man had done to extend the blood red to his whole eye rather than just the pupil. He had no idea how, or why he had blinded himself. Cloud didn't know. And he really didn't want to know. But he studied Vincent's deadly claw suspiciously.

"Sorry to bother you again, man. I know I'm always hassling you. But um...you don't happen to have another Cure materia, do you? I used up my last one when I disintegrated it into the potion when I was trying to, well, you know..." He laughed nervously. When he was trying to what he was always doing. Always trying to bring her back.

Vincent silently went to the trunk under his bed with movements so fluid and graceful it seemed as if he had never been blind at all. He opened it and tossed Cloud a glowing green materia, then pushed the trunk back under the bed. Cloud caught the materia. He wondered if Vincent functioned with sonar.

"Th-thanks, Vincent. Really."

But Vincent had walked back to his bed, had lay down again, back facing Cloud- the universal gesture for "leave." And Cloud got left.

And Vincent went on dreaming of her face.

__________________________________________

Mr. Worker in Bone Village raised his eyebrows as the man with blonde spiky hair emerged from the general area of the coastline. He passed through the excavations, the eerie shadows of skeletons casting ominous bars of dark across him as he walked forwards as if trying to hold him back from imminent doom. Everyone in the village knew him. He was the guy who came here a couple of times a week, walked in whistling, and walked out tearstained and violent. If you were to ask for the time while he was on his way into the sleeping forest, he would give it to you gladly, with a smile and a pat on the back. If you were to ask for the time when he emerged, in a flash, you'd have your back to a tree, a sword to your neck, and a snarling man in your face, growling "Leave me the f*ck alone." And then you could watch him walking dejectedly away, and hear his sobs. The whole village heard his sobs, resonating through the night, or the morning, or whenever he decided to show this time around.

Today, it was late afternoon, and the sun was shining at its most cruel and striking intensity. Beaming orange and red and hot, Cloud could feel it boring into his back as he wiped the sweat from his brow. His large boots plodded through the dusty earth determinedly, green materia clutched white-knuckled in one hand, a bottle of sparkling red in the other. He was well aware of the many eyes around the digging site watching him, judging him, and he was distinctly aware that something else...something different was watching him as well. Something...larger than all of this, in a bizarre, cosmic sense.

Absently, he strummed the harp, fingers strung up by puppet strings of impossible hope, and he stalked through the forest, breaking into a sprint as he saw the Forgotten City, just as he always did. He wove his way to the entrance with the expertise of experience, of bored remembrance of a thousand times passing, until finally, he entered the City of Ancients once more. 

Every single time, without fail, when he first stepped through that entranceway again, he choked on his own lungs. He stared at the lake, the platform, the shadows of faraway memories, stalacites jagged like masamune, shadows haunting like _him_. The little red blood cells swimming frantically in his system screamed out for oxygen, sweet air, and finally, he took a breath. With shaking hands, he lowered his hands into the water, the soft ripples from who knows where lapping up against his wrists, gently, caressingly, and he could almost hear her voice... 

_Cloud..._

Clouds.

And Fog.

And murky, murky water.

_When are you coming, Cloud? _

_When are you waking me up?_

_When are you going to take me home?_

_Cloud?_

Clouds. A soft blue haze over the man's eyes, as he gently lay the Cure materia on the ledge. Fog, rolling o'erhead as the dusk gently set in. Trembling so that the whole bottle shook, he poured the phoenix down over the materia, enveloping green in red. And then, he took the Cure into his hands, closed his eyes, and cast. Green spread across the shimmering water, touching lightly against the centrifugal waves, only to dissolve faintly away.

Cloud opened his eyes, eyes full of desperate, mournful hope.

The murky water did not stir.

He sat there for a long time, holding his breath, lungs in his throat, heart in his hands, red blood cells so strained they could not even scream for depression. And then when it finally got dark, he put his head in his hands, and wept, and rocked himself, back and forth, back and forth in an unspeakable, yet so repeatable anguish.

____________________________________________

Leaves crackled and branches snapped and owls hooted and midnight creatures yowled. Cloud stumbled through the Sleeping Forest , tearstained and painstaken, and bleary. Half-awake and blinded by an acute, yet dull, blunt, sensation of hopelessness. He gripped his head tightly in his hands, weaving about senselessly, with no direction, with no awareness of morning or night or time or place. He tripped over a log, and fell, elbows and torso enveloped in the smell of rotting leaves and mud and insects and animal piss. Wretched, wretched man, he curled up and shook with sobs, until a certain sort of prickling rose up and down his spine, hypnotizing each and every hair on his back. And Cloud was taken by a cold chill. A mysterious shadow cast by the moonlight hovered in the puddle before him. And Cloud turned around.

Someone was watching him.

"Who....are you....?"

The figure smirked.

The murky water waited.

_TBC....it gets even weirder. lots weirder._


	3. Lady Lazarus

...tendencies. (a story about obsession).

Chapter 3: Lady Lazarus

_Someday...soon...._

_comes._

_Someday...Cloud..._

_will too._

"Who ...are you?"

The figure stepped out of the shadows. In the dim moonlight, starlight, Cloud could faintly discern the tall, curvaceous form of a woman. As she drew closer, he could see the fine, delicate bone structure of each limb, the perfectly formed features on her perfectly formed face. She was...ideal. She was...inhuman. She was...beautiful.

She spoke, and her voice was not formed of sound, but of thoughts, bubbles. "My name doesn't matter."

"My name doesn't matter..." Cloud's lips softly repeated the words, mouth and tongue moving against his own will. He looked up bewildered at her. "My...mouth...I didn't say that! I didn't say that! Who are you? And what did you do to me? And how can you do that?"

She smiled, flawless blue-tinged lips of her own sliding up in an embracing expression, as Cloud's mouth opened again, and her words in his voice said "None of that matters either. "

He blinked his blue eyes, slow, methodical, rubbing his lips gingerly. "What do you want from me?" he said, speaking haltingly.

She nodded slowly, statuesque form relaxing as she bent her neck fluidly in a nod. "You should be asking what _you _ want from _me_," Cloud said to himself, and her buzzing voice said the same words to him simultaneously in his head. 

Cloud fell back on his elbows into the mud, palms out to her in a sign of innocence, of pleading. "But I don't want anything!" he exclaimed. "I didn't ask for you, I'm fine!"

The lilac lips pursed together, pouted, her silvery hair swished like whisky windchimes as she shook her head. "Oh dear boy, look at yourself." Cloud's voice snuck out of his throat like a snake. "You, the great hero Cloud Strife, wading in a mud puddle." She leaned over, picked him up with her impossibly smooth hands, slender fingers folding over his. Cloud noticed that not a speck of dirt touched her, though she stood virtually in the middle of a bog. "Cloud." She stroked his cheek, her lips unmoving. "You know what you want. Just tell me. I'd give you anything," Cloud breathed in a whisper. She leaned her head down, kissed him on the head, sensuously, though the gesture was like that of a mother to a small child. "I love you..."

And Cloud believed her. Suddenly, his muscled, wiry arms were around her slim waist, his head was in her chest, and for reasons beyond his comprehension, Cloud, the man, the grown man, the legend, was sobbing. "I...I..." he gasped through his tears.

"You..." her voice echoed through him, perfectly composed.

"I want Aeris to live again," he said. 

Suddenly, there was a clap of lightning, an infernal, otherworldly screaming, and the light, crisp voice of a woman, saying "Done!"

And now Cloud fell forward, and he was hunched over, in the mud again. 

Except this time, he held a purple-black materia in his hand, scuffed, and stained, and gnarled.

Vincent sat straight up in his bed from a nightmare and screamed. It would be ironic for him to scream bloody murder, for that was exactly what he was dreaming of. But irony was flitting about elsewhere this night, for the scream torn from his throat was a single roar of anguish, no more. It always took longer for Vincent to realize that he was out of his nightmare than others- perhaps because what greeted his open eyes was what haunted him with his eyes closed: Red, red, red. Or perhaps it was because, to him, his entirety was one living nightmare, an unending somnambulist hell. But today, a different tune was playing. The soundtrack to this twisted tango veered off track to switch from "Lucrecia" and "Hojo" and "Jenova" and "Sephiroth" to.... 

"Repetition," said Vincent. 

And his gut told him it was all happening again. 

Mud encrusted, world weary, the sunlight mocking his bedraggled, beaten form, Cloud stalked once more into the City of the Ancients, the strange materia in his hands. He had slept all night in that infernal forest, and every sore muscle, every aching bone in his body reported proof of this to him. Dragging mud-stained footprints behind him, he scaled the steps to the ledge once more, this time collapsing to his knees with full blown fatigue. His forearms shook with the mere task of lifting the small, cracked materia. His entire body trembling with the effort, the man shut his grubby eyelids over crystal-blue eyes slowly, readying to cast. 

"Don't." 

His eyes opened. And Cloud swiveled around, brow furrowed. "Wh- Vincent? What are you doing here?" 

Vincent stood in the shadows, cloak folded about him, protective batlike wings. In the dim light of the cavern, only his piercing crimson eyes were visible in his silhouetted form. "Don't do it Cloud. It's not worth it. It wouldn't..." 

Cloud glared at him. "What are you talking about? Have you been talking to Tifa?" 

The harsh harsh red of Vincent's eyes glowed softly, gently. "Tifa? No...what about her?" 

Cloud shook his head turned back to the lake and readied to cast once more. 

"Are you really willing to face the consequences of your actions? Love though eternal isn't revivable in a replacement." 

The blonde man rose to his feet, snapped irritably at the dark figure behind him. "And what would you know about this Vincent, huh? What the hell do you know about what this is about?" He took a threatening step forward. "You- You just left the person you loved to rot in the ground. You just let her die. You didn't even try to save her, and you never ever even tried to bring her back. So don't even talk to me. You don't understand what real love is, you self-centered bastard." 

Pain struck in waves of red irises, pupils. Thick lashes clotted with the smothering ache of guilt. 

Cloud's head lowered in self-defeat. "Oh God, Vincent," he said to his scuffed boots. "I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry. I don't know what got into me. I'm just...tired, and frustrated, and scared. And I feel so bad all the time, man. All the time. I didn't mean it, I just-" 

But when he looked up, Vincent was gone. 

He waited a little while for his friend, but when only silence responded to his sad, weak calls, he settled on his knees once more, holding out the purple-gray materia towards the ceiling, an offering. His eyes closed, he focused his heart's energy on the form at the bottom of the azure lake. Focused on the face he knew would be sweetly and gently and calmly waiting for him, demure and angelic as she always was. And her voice would rise up from the deep, would laugh with him with unbridled joy and innocence. And they would be so so happy. 

Cloud cast. 

And it was not a haze, or fog, or sparkling clouds, or even a thickness of the air that floated over the lake. No, it was a thunderclap, a tearing open of the heavens without anything moving, an internal hellish retch. 

Cloud opened his eyes and looked to the center of the lake his head swirling with the reverberating mental shock. Rubbed at his eyes with his fists, his sight bleary beyond comprehension. What...what was that in the middle of the lake? A splash? A fish? A gentle wave, a ripple, a rock? 

No....there was a current, there was movement there was....oh God...Cloud couldn't scream for trying. There was a hand reaching up towards him, a pale, smooth...familiar hand beckoning towards him, slowly rising, growing closer... 

_With the movements of the moon, with the passing of the waves,_

_the ...tide...rises._

And then

_She...rises...._

"Aeris?!"

TBC.


	4. Dead Ophelia Walking

New Page 1

"...tendencies."

4: Dead Ophelia Walking.

_How should I your true love_

_know you_

_from another?_

_Say you? Nay you. Pray you..._

_mark._  


Fingers. That's what the seaweed was- long and stringy and waving in the soft fluid motions of the lake. Slim, slippery green fingers. They clung to her skin, her limbs, her face, her hair. Fingers. Waving.

And now they were waving goodbye.

Aeris felt the flesh spread across her tired bones, the skin tightening intact and silky smooth and _there_. She felt her fishbitten features seal over in angelic everlasting beauty, felt her moss-encrusted hair smooth over, auburn locks now sleek and clean. She felt her fingers open from clenched fists to point upwards, grasping at the air so far away from her soggy lake bed. She felt her fingertips first touch cool, dry atmosphere, and then, she felt her ankles unbend, feet tiptoeing as as as as

as...

Aeris rose from her teary grave, her glistening head pointed towards the sun, her mouth half-open, thirsting for long sought air, her eyelids, dripping with soft dewy drops, opening suddenly in a full bodied gasp. 

And Cloud melted. She, a fragile, porcelain, perfect figure, emerging from the lake clad in nothing but her own flawless skin and the shroud of her long hair undone from the braid in which it previously inhabited, she trailed a shimmering stream of water and Cloud melted into it. Her eyes, first seaweed green, glossed over by the fog of ancient years, blinked, and cleared, and then turned and focused on her hero, her knight. They saw him, shivering, trembling, exhausted, his once shining armor caked in mud and years of waiting, and they filled with tears. 

"You...came back for me." she whispered, glossy lips still unused to moving, voice seeming foreign to her own ears. 

Cloud nodded dumbly. 

"I...waited," she said quietly. "I waited for so long and you came back for me, "she said, dazed. Cloud reached one tentative hand out to brush her cheek, her nose, her lips, her chin. There she was, standing before him, as he had dreamed for so long, except now she was _real_. 

"I waited..." she said one last time, then passed out, falling into his waiting arms. 

______________________________________________

Vincent, hiding behind his waterfall, fumbled through the trunk he kept under his bed. Every meager possession the man owned was stored in that one wooden case, and he rarely opened it. When he cracked open the lid, the reality of ghosts past wafted out and spoke to him. Today, it was important. Claw and hand alike pawed through the books, the materia, the potions, the mementos that had pained him to see when he still could see them, and they eventually closed on the prize he had been searching for. His fingers tightly gripped the double steel barrels. The thick handle, the light trigger. Sightless, Vincent held the Death Penalty up to the light and ran a hand across it, lovingly. The he tucked it under his arm and shut the trunk.

______________________________________________

Tifa's laugh choked in her throat as the back door to 7th Heaven creaked open. "You think I'm going to let you stay here? Looking like that? Carrying around a naked dead girl? The way you treat me?" 

Cloud's eyes were pained. "Tifa, Tifa please. I have- _we_ have nowhere else to go. She needs to be taken care of. I...I need to rest. Please, Tifa. One night."

Tifa's brown eyes softened for but a moment then hardened in steely, stubborn resolve, bitter once more. "You kissed her yet, Cloud? Huh? Have you screwed her yet, you freak, you necro, you obsessive psychopath? Do you know what this means? Do you know that you're messing with the biggest law of nature there is?"

Cloud looked down at Aeris' wet, fitfully sleeping form, he looked at her slumbering face, he looked back up into Tifa's disconcerted eyes, and he swallowed hard. "Please," was all he repeated. "If not for me, for her. She has no fault." His eyes implored. "Please."

_Rosemary for remembrance..._

Do you remember...?

He did, he did....

_Pray, love, remember._

Praying, the knife went through her.

Sinking, the water knew her. She fell to the bottom, and

_Pansies. _For you. _For thoughts. _

But I thought...

I died?

Aeris' eyes flew open.

She looked up. "Cloud?" She sat up. "Wh- who am I?" she gasped, as she looked around.

"Shush, now," said Cloud, pushing her gently down against the bed and laying a cool hand on her forehead. "You're with me, Aeris. I've got you. I've got you somewhere safe. Somewhere clean and safe. Even if Tifa..." his voice trailed off. "You're safe Aeris. I'll protect you. You'll never be in danger again." He stood up from the bedside. "Get some rest. I'll get us something to eat. And you some clothes." And he walked out of the room, throwing a friendly smile over his shoulder.

"I...I didn't ask where..." said Aeris, to herself.

"I told you not to come back here," grated Tifa's voice, harsh and sharp, tough. "5 minutes ago, I told you this, and apparently you're back here already. Go away. And don't come back."

"Not carrying that _thing_, you're not getting in here. I've got a business to run and people to take care off. You're not getting in here with that on you. Leave that on a doorstep or something, somewhere else, then we can talk," said Tifa.

"It's not a thing."

"I know we were friends. In a way, we may still be friends. I may never be able to not be your friend, after what we've been through. I'm sorry for your pain, I really am. You've got problems and I understand that. You're a sad, sad man. I feel for you. But this isn't the answer. Now get rid of that or go away. Or I may have to make you go."

Vincent pointed Death Penalty straight at Tifa's head. "My gun is _not_ a thing."

"Tifa?" Cloud's voice came from inside 7th Heaven. "I put Aeris in the room. Is everything all right out there?"

Vincent cocked back the hammer on the rifle, and the Tifa's eyes widened in fear. 

"Now," he said. "Are you really going to try and make me leave?"


	5. Fixation

New Page 1

"...tendencies."

5: Fixation.

"You crazy homicidal freak."

Death Penalty pressed even harder against Tifa's temple. "It's a wise tongue that keeps silent when the head's in danger of being blown off."

"Vincent...you psycho you..." Tifa's brown eyes welled up with tears. "Vincent, this isn't you. C'mon, Valentine. I know you. You come into my bar about once a month. You sit in a corner and stew. You...you love Lucrecia. And even though you're a fantastic shot, you would never hurt anything unless you were in danger. Vincent...I know you, you would never..."

"Those who believe they know everything about a person are often unpleasantly surprised. You have no idea what I do in my spare time."

"Yeah? Neither do I. But unlike her, I probably don't care." Cloud's shadow appeared behind Tifa. "Put down the gun, man." 

Vincent made no movement, but merely raised his eyebrows, his sightless orbs of eyes swiveling slowly to face the general direction of Cloud. "I have a...mission. I do not want to hurt you but I will do what I have to." 

Cloud snorted. "What are you, a Turk again? I'm not falling for that crap. You pull that trigger, Vin, and I'll kill you. I won't even hesitate so much as a millisecond." The blonde man's eyes were narrowed. "You do not touch my friends, Vincent. Put down the gun. Whatever bizarre homicidal tendencies you have, you should know that if you shoot her, you're as good as dead. You can't be suicidal too."

Vincent smiled, and Tifa shuddered. It was unnatural, that smile...something sick and rooted in years of the twists and turns of psychological disorder. "Me? Not suicidal? Me?" His smile widened to a grin. "Oh Cloud, you almost make me laugh. What do you know about my tendencies? They fall in every possible way bloodstained tendencies can fall."

"You so much as touch her and I'll kill you so fast you won't have time to even think about your mission, not to mention complete it" said Cloud with a tensed jaw. 

"The probabilities, however small, are worth the risk," said Vincent evenly. 

Cloud's brow furrowed. "You're...obsessed. You're completely infatuated with this plan of yours. Willing to risk the life of yourself and your friends? What kind of fanatic are you?" he said, his voice more aghast than hateful. 

"Obsession? Tendencies? Sometimes when we accuse others, the finger falls upon ourselves," pointed out Vincent. He suddenly shrugged. "I'll come back another day then. When the chances roll higher for me." Then he lowered the gun and simply walked away.

Cloud and Tifa watched Vincent disappear around the corner, swallowed up by the shadows and the moving mass of humanity that swamped Midgar. Tifa stared aghast at the spot Vincent had formally inhabited. "How...What in Hades got into him?" she said aloud to herself, more in shock than anything else. 

"Bitterness," said Cloud calmly, "Can do wonders to people." 

Tifa turned to look him, and her amber eyes narrowed. Slits. "I wouldn't be judging anyone if I were you, Cloud Strife. You who've committed the dirtiest, most perverse sin that this earth has. I'm surprised you haven't been struck down by lightning. You deserve some sort of ungodly punishment. " 

Cloud took Tifa's head in both hands, kissing her sweetly on the lips. "Don't be bitter Tifa. Don't be jealous. It doesn't suit you. You're so beautiful...don't ever let those feelings make you ugly." Tifa's mouth opened and closed, like a asphyxiating fish, as she so often did after one of Cloud's bizarre comments. With nothing to say or do, she simply sighed, then sighed again, then wrapped her arms around Cloud's waist in a vain sort of effort to bring his soul closer to hers, and leaned her tired, worn head against his shoulder. "If this ever comes to some sane conclusion," she mumbled, "Cloud, let's go somewhere else. Let's leave Midgar and go somewhere peaceful and quiet where we'll be alone. Where we'll be happy and quiet and-" 

"Clothes!" shouted Cloud, jerking upright with a snap of fingers. 

"What?" asked Tifa, frazzled. 

"Clothes!" he repeated. "Aeris needs clothes. She can't be her without...it wouldn't be right if she didn't have clothes. I'll get her clothes right now." "She can borrow some of mine," said Tifa, brow furrowed in confusion. 

"No, no, she shouldn't wear your clothes, not that there's anything wrong with yours, it's just...she needs a dress. A pink one. Like the one she always wore. Wears. I've gotta go Tifa. I'll catch you later. Before dinner. Thanks lots Teef, you're the best, I gotta go now..."

And he ran off, lanky limbs flying, leaving Tifa alone in the middle of the dirty street. 

"I swear to all the Gods in the sky," she said under her breath, watching him go, in a resigned, pained sort of tone. "If I find out he's only using me, I'll be the one who punishes him in some ungodly way."

_Cry_ and

_moan_

_A... dry place _

_ call _

to my

_home_  
_ to find some place to rest _

her

_bones_  
_Whilst the angels and devils_  
_ claim _

her

_own_

Aeris rose from her bed, and gasped with shuddering internal horror to discover that this time, the bed she lay upon was no lake bed but one of dry earthly matters. Then, upon realizing that she was, indeed, alive, she began to cry. Because she had no idea why she was alive, if she really was alive, and because she missed the shivering sigh-like whispers of the lake of the ancients, her ancestors. 

She got to her feet, pulling her robe about her like a personal shroud, denying her existence with all her soul, yet knowing with her gut it was true. But...why? ...how? 

She opened the side door of the room, peering out into the mud sodden cobbled alley behind 7th Heaven. Usually it was home to a few stray drunks, but now it was mercifully alone save for Aeris' unintrusive figure standing on the stoop. Midgar. She remembered this place, faintly, stored somewhere in the back of her head. Her green eyes surveyed her surroundings, taking it all, every puddle and sour whiff of rotting garbage. This was new, it was original, it was, to her, truly real. 

And then her eyes fell upon a scruffy ball of red-orange fur. Aeris took a few hesitant steps in its direction, then fell to her knees with a sob of a gasp. There, laying on the cold cold ground, was a fuzzy kitten of fiery ochre, the color of flame. But between its fuzzy nose and its sweet little tail with the crimson tuft upon it, the entirety of the feline's side was blown clear away, the wound quite clearly perpetrated by a gunshot. Aeris picked up the bleeding cat, finding that it's limp little body had no pulse, that it was cold and beyond repair. A tear fell from her eyes in sympathy, though the girl didn't no completely why she felt it's death so. Somehow, the cat reminded her of someone. And it reminded her that it was dead and she was alive and that life was so very fragile and it was so very easily destroyed and that was why it was beautiful. And maybe that was why she felt so ugly inside. So much...dirtiness...inside. 

So she placed the cat in her lap, and closed it's glazed black button eyes and pet it, over and over again, and that was how Cloud found her. 

"Aeris? Aeris. Hey, let's go."

Aeris blinked at Cloud. "Go...go where?"

"I'm gonna uh...I'm gonna take you shopping right now. Right now. c'mon, let's go."

She stroked a finger gently along the ruffled fur of the kitten. "But Cloud, look at the poor cat. Somebody shot it. It's so sad...it was only a baby..." she whispered softly. 

Cloud didn't even bother to look down. "That's great Aeris, I mean, that's horrible. That's just...sick. Sick. But Aeris? We really need to go now. Shopping. We'll be right back, alright? We just need to go _now_." 

"Now...but...why, I..."

"Aeris, _please_." 

The flower girl rose to her feet, her robe clutched around her. "Alright Cloud, I'm coming now," she said, laying the kitten's crumpled body solemnly on the stoop. She had scarcely laid the cat's tiny skull on the pavement before Cloud grabbed roughly by her wrist and pulled her through the back of the house. 

"Tifa! Back before dinner! Thanks again!" he yelled at her deadpan expression as he rushed out onto the twilight Midgar streets. 

_________________________________________ 

"PINK, I told you pink," Cloud bawled in the face of the saleslady. "Pink. How hard is it to get that right?" 

"But sir, this is pin-" 

"It is not pink, it is magenta. I want something a light pink. More pastel, but not seethrough or anything like that. Pink, with a bow." 

"Sir, I'm not quite sure we have something like that in stoc-" 

"Well then get some in stock!" the man yelled in frustration. "Goddammit, the service here really sucks....huh? Whaddya want, Aeris?" 

Aeris had tugged on the sleeve of her "guardian" face full of concern and bewilderment. "I don't need the same dress that I got before, Cloud. The one the lady got me is fine...I don't really mind-" She stopped when she saw the expression on Cloud's face. "...or pink is fine." 

Cloud sat down, gently pulling Aeris down next to him as well. "Aeris, I'm sorry if I scared you. I just want...things to be like they were. Just like they were before, with you, and me. Just the same, that's all. You understand don't you?" 

Aeris nodded mutely. 

Cloud smiled, blue eyes innocent, and for a moment, Aeris believed the blue, the watery blue that reminded her of home. "Now sit here with the nice lady," he said to her, putting his hand on her shoulder lovingly. "And I'll be back with a surprise for ya." He grabbed his coat, stood up, and walked briskly out the door. 

Just as he left, the saleswoman came back in, a pink dress with a bow in hand. "We had our resident tailor sew this up rush job for you," she said meekly. "We saw the sword that guy had. Whew. Why don't you put this on in the dressing room and see if this fits, hon?" 

Aeris nodded, expressionless but for a quick nervous smile. "Alright, thank you very much." 

The woman put her hands on her hips, shaking her head at the door. "Is your boyfriend always like that?" she asked. "He'd scare the hell out of me daily, if he were my man. I'd be scared that I'd wake up in the middle of night and find out he was trying to kill me for not being perfect or something. Hunh." 

Aeris shook her head. "He's not, I mean, he is, I mean....I don't remember," she concluded softly. 

The saleslady shrugged, and put the dress in Aeris' arms. "Well, whatever floats your boat. Dressing room's that way." 

Looking rather lost, the girl nodded, smiled again, and entered the small room with the dress, pulling the curtain shut. She took off the dark brown dress Tifa had lent her, and studied herself in the mirror, hands flying automatically to her slim pale stomach. Intact. The skin was completely smooth, with nary a mark, nary a scar. She turned around, fingers feeling her spine. The same applied to the skin in that area. She pressed down on her stomach, remembering the sword, _blades, _remembering the the laugh, _die, _and Sephiroth's green eyes, _drown_. She remembered floating, she remembered her lake_, return_. And once again, the tears began to flow, unstemmed, so noticeable in the dry, dry air around her. 

"What's taking her so long?" demanded Cloud through gritted teeth, standing outside the dressing room. 

The saleswoman, safe behind her counter, only shrugged, with a "how the hell should I know" expression on her face. 

Cloud tapped his foot against the room frenetically then abruptly stopped as the curtain opened. 

There she stood, looking exactly as she had the last time he had seen her, pink dress, wan little face with the large green eyes. His breath stilled within him. "Aeris," he said with a grin. "You look great. Except your hair should be braided, can you braid hair?" he said with furrowed brow to the annoyed saleswoman, "Well, it doesn't matter just yet. You look absolutely wonderful. Oh, and I got you this basket, with flowers in it. It's a flowerbasket, for a flowergirl. Do you remember Aeris? Aeris?" He frowned. "Are you alright Aeris? Aren't you happy?" 

"Oh yes," lied Aeris through her sheath of patted away tears, forcing a smile. "I'm fine." Her hand rested subconsciously on her stomach. _Blades_. "I'm just fine."


	6. 

New Page 1

"...tendencies."

6: ____cidal.

"The job," said Vincent, to the darkness of his blind world. "The job makes the soul of the man, the life."

He methodically sharpened the long vicious looking knife he held in his hand. Back, forth, grating and grating.

"A job well done," said Vincent to the emptiness of his cave, "rings eternal with its brightness."

Grating and sawing ,serrating edge so fine it could cut paper at the touch. Skin...at the...touch.

" A job gone awry can demolish the nations." He sheathed the blade with a goosebump of a "shhhhhheenk". 

"A job completed... closes a chapter," said Vincent to his shadowself. 

Vincent stood up and went to close the chapter.

"There is, " said Tifa very calmly and very composedly, hands gripped at her sides. "A dead man lying on top of my bar."

Blood. Cold clammy hands and spilled tequila and ugh. Ugh. Stench and dead man's skin and glossy fish eyeballs popping out of his head. Blue. Blue. The blue of the dead. He looked like he had been drowned, the way he was all purple with his own mortality, but he wasn't. He had been stabbed. Knife through the stomach, ripping through organs like butter, pulling out and slashing across the chest. 

Perhaps he had drowned. On his own blood, choked on it, and now floating on it. 

Tifa rolled up her sleeves with a sigh and walked over to the table, flipping the corpse over to look into his face. She squinted, brow furrowed for a minute. There was something familiar about the scruffy beard and the blonde wild hair and the blue eyes. She prodded at the beginnings of a pot belly. Eh. She was in the process of moving him when Cloud and Aeris walked in.

"Teef, what is tha- aaaaugh!" excalimed Cloud, reeling backwards. That's...aw man that's sick. Tifa, do you have any idea what that is?"

"A dead body, "she replied with a slight pout. "Don't tell me you haven't seen one before. I know you have. I've been with you while you killed people."

Aeris' eyes flew wide open, startled. "...killed?"

"That's not killing," Cloud snapped back, his sleeve held up to his nose to muffle the smell. "It's self-defense. I make sure neither my loved ones or me get hurt. That's it. That doesn't count as killing. What the hell happened to this poor guy anyways?"

Tifa shrugged. "I dunno. I just ....found him on this table. Found him. I did!" she snapped as Cloud looked at her funny. Her eyes switched over to focus on Aeris. Pink dress, pink bow, flower basket, braided hair. Process. Repeat. Process. Repeat. "What the hell did you do to her?" she cried, aghast. "You...oh my god."

Cloud's expression darkened. "Aeris, go in the back room." 

Tifa sneered. "What are you, her mother now?" 

He had, after all, given life to her. 

Cloud snarled. "You keep out of this Tifa. Aeris is my business, not yours, you got that?"

"Not my business? And what shall we call you and me, then, Cloud? Does you and me exist?"

"Oh, don't even get into that Tifa, don't. Don't try to guilt me into-"

"...excuse me?"

They turned and looked at Aeris, emerald eyes dewy and frightened. "What...what about him? What're we going to do about him?"

Cloud and Tifa looked down and saw between them the dead man, rotten like a dead fish bobbing at the top of a pond. Tifa sat down and covered her face in her hands. "Take him out of here. I got to open up soon. Bring him to the coroner's or something, will you, Cloud? Look for some ID on him?" 

Cloud's face remained steely, his body stiffly placed in front of Aeris like a protective immoveable shield. 

"Please Cloud?" Her voice was tired and sad.

Cloud relented, his expression softening as he picked up the corpse and walked out of the door silently.

There was a long silence until Tifa looked up at Aeris. Green eyes looked back at amber, looked back at the blood on the floor, looked at the doorway where Cloud had left. 

"So," Tifa asked Aeris. "You want something to eat?"

Aeris watched Tifa clean up the dark goopy plasma over her scrambled eggs and steak, the only things, according to Tifa, that the dark-haired woman could cook. "You and Cloud," ventured the flowergirl hesitantly. "You're...together."

Tifa looked up sharply. "Yes," she said, blunt and curt, and went back to scrubbing the floor with exponentially growing vigor. After a moment of beating the hell out of the floor, she turned back to Aeris with a sigh, though her eyes did not rise to meet the girl's. "Yes, we're together, and no, I don't know where we're going with this relationship, and yes I am jealous and no I'm not going to let you have my man no matter what kind of a jerk he is."

She returned to scrubbing, and Aeris munched on her eggs, meek and quelled. Munch and scrub, munch and scrub.

"So what are you, anyways," inquired Tifa brusquely, though there was a gentle tone behind her words. "Are you really Aeris? Aeris Aeris? Or some sort of clone? Or her reincarnated?"

"I..." Aeris thought back to the dressing room, thought back to her home beneath the waves. _Blades. Waves. Laughter. Drown._ "I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't really...remember. I remember...things, but not everything, and I forget everything oh so often. It's like everything's blurry."

Tifa stood up and threw the reddened rag in the seat, rolling her sleeves down and putting her hands on her hips. "I told Cloud this was all wrong. I warned him. I told him he didn't know what he was getting into, and then he ups and creates something unnatural like-" she stopped her words, an apology in her eyes.

"...like me," Aeris finished the sentence for her. 

"Like you," Tifa admitted. "In all understanding of your situation, you shouldn't even be alive. You shouldn't be here. But it was Cloud's mistake, not yours. And now..." She shook her head, long lashes fluttering against her cheek tiredly. "I always got to fix that boy's mistakes." She hopped over the bar and tied an apron on, pulling back her long lustrous hair. "Anyways, at least I got someone to talk to now."

Aeris twirled her fork in her slender fingers. "Tifa, I know that you....don't think highly of me right now, but we were friends before, right? And I'd like to be your friend now. Really, I would. So...could we? Be friends?"

Tifa looked back at her absently, smile pasted on her face. "Oh, yeah, sure. Friends. Totally."

Aeris returned the smile cheerfully, then looked back down at her plate, the bleeding eggs, the raw fleshy steak. Tifa's smile had seemed genuine enough. There was heart in that woman, a caring heart, and it extended to Aeris. But there was also this other feeling, this dangerous, frenetic _something_ hiding behind that smile. Aeris looked at Tifa's back and poked at her own food. Suddenly she wasn't so hungry anymore. 

"Wait, say that name again?"

"Bart Highwind."

"_Highwind_?" 

"Highwind. Jesus Christ, man, you deaf?" The medical intern pulled on his cold rubber gloves.

Cloud shook his head. "But Highwind? I know a Highwind...looks like this guy. It's too uncanny for my tastes. Too coincidental."

The college-aged intern snorted as he casually examined the gutted insides of the corpse. "Yeah, well I'm dealing with facts here, and his ID places him as Bart Highwind, freight plane driver. He does transport. Has a twin brother and an older sister."

"Would this twin brother by any chance be named Cid?" Cloud asked with frigid spiders crawling up and down his back.

"Yea," said the kid in the lab coat, grabbing a pizza-cutter knife from his tray of tools. "Yeah. Cid. How'd you know that?"

Cloud shook his head. "Lucky guess."

He looked at the body's empty eyes as the jr. coroner pulled back the sheet.

Bart Highwind. Cid's brother. From a blurry distance, one could mistake them for each other. 

How the hell did he end up in Tifa's bar, dead?

Vincent saw Cloud through the window, alone. Tifa and Aeris must be in 7th Heaven together by themselves. If he were Cloud, Vincent thought, he wouldn't leave Aeris alone with Tifa. But then, if he were Cloud, he wouldn't leave either of them alone. Not with men like Vincent walking the streets. Not with things like this happening. He peered over Cloud's shoulder through the frosty glass and saw a corpse, realizing that the autopsy would take some time, that Cloud would be staying there.

The job could start. 

_And will he not come again?_

_And will he not come again?_

Perhaps he will come again. Perhaps he will come again with a knife in his hand and the sun in his eye and the dripping water of the lake from his bloody feet.

_And will he not come again?_

_And will he not come again?_

Nay.

Nay.

_He is dead, he is dead._

Dead.

Go to thy death-bed.

He will never come again.  


TBC.

Yes. Gets /even/ freakier. I am freaky-queen. Here me Roar. 

http://www.sordidstory.cjb.net


	7. Abyssmal Spiral

New Page 1

"...tendencies." (a story about obsession)

7: Abyssmal Spiral

Blur blur blur. 

"Brumas." 

"Algo incorehente" 

Fog screamed a thick smothering warning to Leroy Elways. 

He walked towards the bar hoping to get a drink, his stern jaw set tight as always. The shadows cast by the dim streetlights fell sideways, contorting and freakish. 

Strength and experience had made a cocky S.O.B. of Leroy Elways. 

He carried no fear with him. He carried a revolver with him. He had very large biceps. He could bench press 250 lbs. without blinking and knew every trick of the slums. And he could fight. 

Death beckoned a thin pale finger to Leroy Elways. 

He heard a noise behind him and turned around and fell onto a sword. Or a sword fell through him. Either way he ended up with a huge shard of metal shrieking through his chest. 

Blood, thick warm puddles of it, made a very nice shroud for Leroy Elways. 

The figure in the dark -_brumas- _cleaned the dripping sword on the grungy shirt of Leroy Elways, then stalked off into the night. 

Blurblurblur. Stepstepstep. Disappear. 

Laughter mourned the death of Leroy Elways. 

Nobody else was there to. 

NO! NO! NO!

Three screams pierced through the night like an unholy trinity.

Cloud sat up in bed and tried to place where the noise was coming from, blue eyes gleaming in the dark of the night.

NEVER! I DON'T WANT TO! OH GOD, PLEASE NO!

His hand trembled, his lips trembled, and his eyes widened to saucers. And with more a gasp than a word of speech, he said, "Aeris."

Within seconds, the man had tumbled out of his bed, pulling on his shirt and pants hurriedly as he ran. He practically tripped over his own flying legs as he crossed the hallway in a matter of steps. With an open hand and a kick, he slammed the door to Aeris' room open, snarling "Alright, you bastards, you leave her alo-"

Alone.

All alone, Aeris sat in her room, sobbing and tearing at her hair and rocking herself on the bed.

Cloud's steps slowed as he approached hesitantly.

"Why did you do it?" she asked suddenly, huge green eyes abruptly swinging up towards him in the darkness. "Why? Was there some reason? Do you need me for something? Did you want to tell me something?"

Cloud's mouth hung open but it held no answer for the girl.

"Why, goddammit," she cried. "Why? Why did you bring me back? When all I wanted was to stay in the warm green water with my mother and my father and my close buzzing family? Tell me!" She clutched at his shirt with her clenched fists. "Why? Why?" She pounded at his chest, sobbing. "Why do I exist??!!"

Cloud sat down and gathered her into his arms, tears running out of his own flourescently shining blue eyes. "I love you," he said softly. "I love you," he repeated, louder, holding her at arms length to look into her face. "I need you. I love you. That's why I brought you back."

Aeris ventured a smile.

_We love you too, though, Aeris. Come back..._

"I love you," she murmmered, wrapping her thin arms around Cloud.

_Blades_ the memories screamed, _die_, the hissed, _bleed_, so she clung to him.

On the other side of the thin wall, Tifa heard, and Tifa mourned. And Tifa ground her teeth and glared at the darkness and swore herself she'd get her revenge.

"Revenge," said Vincent, watching through the window from the alley.

"Is something you keep asking for, but never truly get.

Revenge, though unattainable, is temporarily satiable."

"By what?" asked a silken soft voice behind him.

Vincent turned around. "Hello Jenova," he said to the tall blue figure, so elegant and perfect, as young and ideal as the day Cloud had seen her in the woods, had taken the purple materia from her.

"By what," she repeated, in his voice, through his mouth, to flex her power.

Vincent wasn't fazed. "By bloodshed," he said. "And Jenova, you won't win the battle. Not this time. Not now."

"We'll see," she said, with a smile, and a little bow. She pointed at the embracing figures of Cloud and Aeris. Of Tifa now in the fitness room punching tearstained and infuriated at the punching bag. "But it seems like I've got the lead."

Then she was gone.

Vincent held his gun close to his chest.

And Vincent stayed.

"He-ey," grinned Tifa at Cloud and Aeris the next morning when they emerged for breakfast. "How are you kids doing? Great? Great. Want some coffee? It's fresh. Be a shame to waste it. Hahah."

"It's amazing," said Vincent to himself, sitting outside the window of the back attachment to 7th Heaven where Tifa lived, watching them, "How false laughter can be when it cloaks agony."

Aeris shook her head. "No thank you, Tifa," she said with a soft smile. "But thank you for asking."

"No problem hahaha. What about you Cloud?" She brandished the coffee pot in his face with a mad glint in her auburn eye.

Cloud eyed Tifa warily, settling down in his seat. "Yeah, sure, sounds great Teef. Fill 'er up," he said, offering his cup.

His officialthankyouverymuch girlfriend, as Tifa liked to refer to herself, poured him a cupful of the hot steaming liquid, smiling a bit smug at him. "Drink it all up," she said to him, eyes studying the blonde man intently. "All of it now."

Cloud raised an eyebrow. "Okie dokie," he returned, gulping at it. "Why're you so chipper, anyways?"

"Oh, no reason," Tifa chirped airily. "No reason at all." Suddenly, she shoved a knife in Aeris' face. Aeris squeaked, then realized there was something on the end of the knife. Her eyes uncrossed. "Oh...how nice," the flower girl said politely.

"Sausage?" offered Tifa, not withdrawing the sausage-shish-kabob-knife. "Eggs?" Aeris shook her head again. "No thank you. I'm not very hungry."

"I am!" announced Cloud, patting his growling stomach rowdily. "Load it on Tifa, I can take it," he said with a grin, as the hot coffee woke him up. The coffee...Cloud sniffed at it. "Hey, this tastes weird, Teef. New coffee? New cream? Somethin'?"

"Oh, nothing new at all," said Tifa, looking quite innocent. "Nothing at all." Clang. A plate full of sausages and eggs sat in front of Cloud. She patted him on the back. "Eat up." Hips swinging, she sashayed back to the kitchen. "So what are you two doing today, ahehe?"

"Going back to the dress store," said Cloud through a mouthful of eggs, as Aeris sat beside him with her hands folded in her lap demurely. "Get some more..uh..dresses."

"What kind of dresses, honey?" asked Tifa's voice from inside the kitchen, invisible.

"Well, like the one she has on right now. Lots of them."

A crash, then the tinkling of broken glass as Tifa dropped something in the kitchen. "Ahah, clumsy me, dropped that glass on accident, hehe." She came out looking slightly frantic. "Can't have too many pink dresses that look exactly like the dress you died in, eh?" she said with a wild grin, as both Cloud and Aeris squirmed. She stared at them a long second. "You going to finish your coffee?" she snapped at Cloud.

He stared at her bewildered, then drank the rest. "Yeah, yeah, done," he said. "Sheesh."

She smiled. "Good. Well, you two better be off. heheh. Bye!"

Cloud nodded slowly, then, grabbing another sausage in one hand, and Aeris' slim white hand in the other, he walked quickly out the door.

Tifa watched them go. In the silence of the empty room, she brought down her bare hand with one swift movement and slammed her fist through the table, breaking it in half with the greatest of ease. She stood in the splinters, the rubble, and she smiled. She was Tifa Lockheart. And she was strong. She didn't need that man. She didn't need any man.

Cloud put his hands on Aeris' shoulders, kissing her lightly on the nose. "Stay here, alright," he told her at the entrance of the dress store. "I'm just going to pick up your dresses and we'll go." His demeanor brightened as a sudden idea hit him. "And then we can go back and find some playground to sit and talk in, alright? Just like old times." He grinned. "Exactly like old times, ok? We'll do everything we did together over, except...except better, ok?"

Aeris nodded dumbly. She felt like a child when Cloud talked to her like this, but it wasn't like she could do anything about it. It wasn't like she shouldn't be treated this way. She got dizzy all the time and forgot where she was, all the time. Of course Cloud was going to take care of her. He loved her. She smiled as she watched his retreating figure. Then she sat down on the stoop and hugged her knees. _blades_. Her heart leapt into her mouth, beating wildly. Her mind, her eyes corkscrewed in her head. She fell over and...and...

...and when she looked back up, she saw ... she saw...

Vincent walked unnoticed, silently, into the back rooms of 7th Heaven, sat down crosslegged in the middle of the room where Aeris now resided.

_My girl, my girl, where did you go?_

"It is the nature of flower girls," he said slowly, methodically, "To get lost in their fields."

_My girl, my girl, where do you go?_

He picked up a flower that had fallen from the basket Cloud gave her. Picked it up in his unclawed hand and gently plucked petal by petal off. "It is the song of flower girls," he said, in the same voice as before, yet sadder, "to chant that he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me...not."

_My girl, my girl, where will you go? _

  
I'm going where the cold wind blows

Aeris fell over and when she looked up

and when she looked up

and when she looked up

she saw

she saw

she saw

saw

saw

blood. 

TBC.


	8. The Sliver Breaks

New Page 1

...tendencies. (a story about obsession).

8: The Sliver Breaks 

Mommy? 

_Yes Aeris?_

Why is there blood? 

_Someone died, Aeris._

How did he die? 

_Somebody stabbed him, Aeris._

Why is he bleeding? I thought...I thought the green washed away the blood. 

_You're not in the green anymore Aeris._

_None of you are. You're in a different world. He's dead._

Did..I...die? 

_Yes, you did._

Did...I bleed? 

_The green washed away._

Do you know anybody who bled and never washed away? 

_...your father._

Mommy? 

_Yes, Aeris?_

Am I dead? 

_Yes Aeris._

Mommy? 

_Yes, Aeris?_

Why aren't I bleeding? 

But she saw blood anyways, blood everywhere, spattered in Pollock streaks across the sidewalks as if the cruel hand of this murderer had a tendency towards the artistic. "A little dabble there, a little splat there..." Aeris held her stomach. Trails and fingertips indicating crawling, a puddle indicating a falling, a body indicating the very much cold and very much dead. She almost started to cry, and she didn't even know his name. _Leroyelwaysleroyelwaysleroyelways._ Didn't even know him, had never seen him and yet here she was with tears in her eyes for his gruesome demise. _bladesbladesblades._ With a little "ah-" Aeris' hands slid to her stomach once more in personal remembrance and sympathy all at the same time. She wondered what his last thoughts had been, wondered if he had been able to speak to his happy family faces floating dreamily in the green of the lifestream, wondered if that cold steel cutting through flesh and spine was as invasively frigid as it had been for her. Cruelly, bitterly, biting her lip 'til it left marks, she wondered if anybody would decide to bring _him_ back. 

As if on cue, a strong set of fingers closed almost roughly about her slim arm and pulled her abruptly to her feet. "What are you doing?" hissed a voice that was supposed to love her until she died. _Again..._ Shake. Rattle. "What are you... get away from there!" Blue light eyes that were supposed to be alight with feeling for her were now gleaming aggressively, frightening with a paranoid fixation. 

"Cloud, I..." 

Before she could speak another word, the man clasped her to his chest, hugging her tight, one hand in her hair. "Don't you ever, ever go near blood again." 

She blinked confusedly at him. "...But why?" 

Suddenly he forced her out arms length, studying her, his gaze roaming her every inch, searching for the stray imperfection. Frantically, he dusted her off. "Because...it's dirty. You should never have blood on you. It's just wrong. It'd be like..." 

"Like I was dying again?" cried a bewildered Aeris, pulling herself out of his grasp. "What, would it remind you that I died? That someone killed me with a sword? That you tried to at first, that..." 

"Shhhh...." Aeris' words died a sad struggling death in her throat as Cloud pulled her into the shadows, hand slamming across her mouth, the other arm tight across her ribs. "Don't be so loud about it, Aeris. God, you want people to hear us?" 

Aeris couldn't answer. Hell, she could hardly breathe. 

"Hey!" shouted a cop who had been working at the murder scene. "You alright back there, Miss?" 

"Now," said Cloud in a soft purr of a whisper, stroking her hair, her cheek with such tenderness, such loving delicacy that she couldn't believe he was the one that put those bruises on her arm. "I'm going to let you go, and you're going to be quiet, ok? After all," he laughed. "You were always the quiet, shy one. So cute and agreeable." He let her go, tapped her lightly on the nose. "Always the most innocent yet mature of us all, always like a mother and a child all at the same time." He kissed her. 

The cop turned around, muttering "Damn exhibitionist kids," under his breath. 

"We were so perfect together back then, Aeris. Let's be just like that, alright? Let's just...stay away from all the bad stuff like blood and death and we'll stay together forever. It'll be you and me. Cloud and Aeris. The most perfect couple there ever was." He grinned at her. If it wasn't for his sad, sad eyes, she could've believed him. "We'll be a legend. Eternal. We'll never ever die, at least, our story never will." 

Aeris looked in the puddle of blood and saw the word love crushed under a Soldier's boot heel. 

"Now," her one true love to whom she gave her heart and her soul and twice her life said to her as he turned toward the yellow ticker tape. "What's this mess all about?" 

Vincent sat in the withered remains of once blossomed petals and listened to the flower girls sing. If he listened close enough, he could hear his, deep beneath the ground /_6 feet/_, and sometimes she called his name. 

_ There is a willow grows aslant a brook_

_ That shows his _

WHORE! 

Vincent blinked. Redblackred. 

_ leaves in the glassy stream._

_ There with _

F*CKING FLOWER- 

_ garlands did she come_

Vincent watched the corpses of daisies slide across the floorboards as the whole building shook. He stood up and walked down the stairs. 

F*CKING... FLOWER GIRL- 

_ Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples_

_ That liberal shepherds give a grosser name_

SLUT- 

"Keyholes are the windows into the soul," said Vincent, joking with himself and the dead spider in the corner as he peered around the door of the workout room to see Tifa's ranting. "The eyes merely look through them and steal away what they can." 

_But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them _

Silent and invisible and blind, his best talents three, Vincent slipped into the room and behind the door and its ghostly fingers of shadows. 

_ There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds_

THINKS SHE'S SOME KIND OF LITTLE PRINCESS- 

_ Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke...._

Crack. Smack. 

Tifa beat viciously at the punching bag, each hit resonating through her bones as she slammed fist after fist into the hard leather, knuckles impacting with satisfying slaps, cursing profusely through gritted teeth. 

"Ah," said Vincent finally, out loud. "The sliver finally breaks from its dangling perch as I expected it to." He pointed his bloodred eyes amiably in the direction of Tifa, extending his empty arms. "I come without my companion this time, friend. Would you care to tell me the story of the branch who broke the princess?"

"Wha-what?" Her eyes narrowed. "Have you been listening to me this whole time? What're you talking about?"

"I amend," said Vincent, bowing his head. And when he looked up, there was a queer expression on his face. "In other words...I...have a job for you, Tifa."

"Eyes?"  
"Brown."  
"Hair?"  
"Black."  
"Race?"  
"Black."  
"Estimated age?"  
"Eh...35, 40? Maybe 45. Looks old, but is he ever in shape. Take a look at those biceps. They're huge." A whistle.  
"Heh, yeah. Estimated height and weight?"  
"About 6'2, 3, 200 some odd pounds. "  
"Any particularly distinguishing features?"  
"Well...he's...hunh. He's got a gun arm..."

"That man," said Aeris hushedly as she moved forward. "That man was killed. He was stabbed through the stomach."  
The detective looked up from his pen and pad and grinned at her. "Sure was, honey. Pretty messy too. Run along- 'tain't a site for pretty eyes like yours," he said, gnawing on a cigarette.  
Aeris ignored him. "Cloud, look. That man was stabbed through the stomach and he looks just like...Barrett."  


"Barrett and then Cid. And before, there was that little red kitten in the alley," said Vincent.

"Got a fingerprint match yet?" yelled the young detective to the cop car.   
"Yup," his colleague said back to him, voice muffled. "Uh...one Mr. Leroy Elways. Formerly of Kalm."  
"Wife? Kids?"  
"Nyet."

"Omigod."  
"What?" Aeris looked up at Cloud's face, concern radiating. "What, what is it?"   
He looked like he had seen a ghost, and yet, he wasn't looking at the ghost that inquired over his state, standing next to him in a new pink dress years old. "That...wound. It's huge. It's absolutely massive." He raised a tentative finger to point. "You see his sternum? The sword went straight through and didn't rip anything around it. Just went clean through," he said in a daze. "There's only one sword I know that can do that..."  
Aeris gulped and didn't ask. _Blades. _"M...masa...masa..."  
"Ultima Weapon."   
Aeris' eyes focused. "Wh-a-t?"  
"Ultima Weapon, I don't know how or who, or...nobody knows where that is except for me and Tifa," he said, shaking his blonde spikes distressedly. "But it has to be. I could recognize its mark anywhere," he gulped. "Don't know how or why or..."  
Cloud felt a twinge of pain in his hand looked down and almost screamed. Blood was on his hand. Blood, dripping from a cut that seemed years old on his palm, scar tissue, blood, and he hadn't even touched anything...except Aeris. 

"One of us is probably next, " said Vincent. "One of us or a lookalike. It's all the same."

"You!" screamed Cloud at Aeris, aghast, as if, for the first time, he saw a corpse walking, a decomposing, rotting mummy. "You're dirty!"  
Aeris shook her head vigorously, tears flying from her emerald eyes. "No, no, Cloud, please..."  
"You!" screamed Cloud at Aeris, holding up his hand. "You did this to me...both of you! You and Tifa!"  
"Tifa?"  
"Oh, don't you think I know? You know how that Highwind man died? Tifa's kitchen knife, that's how. You...you witch, teaming up with my murdering ex...all you women are...are.. evil!"  
"But Cloud," sobbed Aeris. "I didn't do anyth-"  
"How dare you accuse me!" frantically hissed Cloud. "Me? Cloud Strife? Kill?" He panicked, remembering Tifa's words in the bar. "No, that time was self-defense, it wasn't me, it was....she took her kitchen knife, the doctor told me, and now, now she's going to kill all of us, oh god I gotta go, I gotta go...." he said, mumbling wildly as he backed away.  
"Go far away, Aeris," he shouted over the confused crowd. "Get far away from her. She'll kill you, the sicko. And stay far away from me. You're all dirty now. Don't want you...all dirty..."   
_Git thee...to a..._  
And the noises and the bodies of the crowd swallowed him up, and he sunk into the city.  
_Git thee to a lake?   
Nay.  
Git thee to thy home._

"He's in the wrong, and you know it," said Vincent to Tifa's denying eyes. "What he does must be undone. He must learn his lesson."  
He put Quicksilver into her hand.  
"You've taken life before, Tifa, I've seen you. Now is the time to take yet another. Justified, just as always."  
Tifa looked up and in her eyes was not pain or sorrow or anger but the compounded very picture of horror- the type of horror one only feels when discovering that dark secret part of oneself that no one ever wants to find.


	9. muddy death

New Page 1

...tendencies. (a story about obsession)

9: muddy death. 

She _fell_, and the verdant _brook wept_.  
_Her clothes spread wide_, and out of her basket, _her weedy trophies_ tumbled out.  
Cloud's flowers, pink and red, and now, wilted, they fell from her grasp and crushed underfoot in a puddle of mud.   
_She chanted snatches of old tunes_, of /He loves me, he loves me, he loves me....**not**/, _as if_ she were _one incapable of her own distress.  
_Then collapsed on a street corner and hugged her knees, confused and abandoned and unsure of her own existence, of her own merit as a living person, or as a mind. Slowly, slowly sleep crept upon her, it's pitying hands caressing her, rocking her into sleep like the hands of her mother, her family, like the hands of the cold murky waters. Though she was wet, she was tired, and so slumber fell upon her, and the green eyes haltingly, but eventually slipped shut.

Thunder rumbled.

It had been raining and now it rained hard, and _long it could not be before her garments, heavy with their drink, pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy..._

_muddy..._

death. 

Aeris opened her eyes. Maybe it was fate, maybe it was a curse, maybe it was just coincidence, but it seemed like every single time she opened her eyes lately, she saw something that made her want to scream. This time was no different. Aeris wanted to scream. A hand, caked with mud, caked with blood, was tugging at her skirt hem. No, it was doing more than tugging, it was grabbing it tightly and twisting it, using her dress as some sort of lever to push the rest of its mangled body upwards. Another hand joined the first, and Aeris fell backwards, batting the hands away from her in a panic. "Who are you?" she cried. "Why are you doing this to me?"   
"You...." said the voice in an asphyxiated gasp. "You....it can't be....you...."  
The body fell, and dropped its dirtied shawl, letting materia orb after materia orb tumble delicately down the street in a rainbow of color. Aeris ventured forwards, peering into the body's face. A pair of once-bright brown eyes now glossed over, soft youthful skin, a tousled mess of black hair, and Aeris' hand flew to her mouth to catch the name that fell out of it. "Yuffie!"   
Yuffie couldn't answer. Because Yuffie was no longer Yuffie. Yuffie was dead. Yuffie was very much dead. Yuffie had been shot several times through the chest so that it was not a gunshot wound in the middle of her, but a cavern.   
Aeris strangled a sob, shook the girl in front of her rapidly, several times, trying to wake the young ninja up in the denying way that distressed young flower girls have a habit of doing. "Yuffie! Yuffie, please. Yuffie, please talk to me, please!" Why, oh why, did this trail of death, this trail of corpses and bodies keep following her? Who, in all the world, would stalk behind her like this, reminding her time after time of her own bloody death? The flower girl placed her former comrade gently on the ground, walked circles around the empty, sodden streets. "Help..." she said, her voice barely audible even to herself. "Help me!" she screamed, and her voice echoed in the abandoned stone corridors of a thousand thousand shut doors.

"Help you?" A deep, melodious laugh rung out from behind a corner. Vincent stepped out of the shadows, Death Penalty close to his side, eyes shining feverishly red in the dark. His bronze boots clanged as he stepped forwards towards the frightened Aeris. "Oh, my dear, dear girl. You're beyond help now."

The door to the weapons room in the basement of 7th Heaven slammed open loudly against the wall, Cloud's extended arm pushing against it as he stumbled frantically in. "Ultima...Ultima Wea...Where the hell is it, where _is_ it," he mumbled under his breath, fumbling through racks and cupboards and drawers full of weapons. Knives and guns and staffs Cloud threw on the floor in his fit of temporary obsession, savage daggers with teeth like sharks and materia that glowed with energy nobody but a select few new how to harness. All of this Cloud cast blindly to the floor at his feet, inconsequentially, as if unaware of the bizarrely deadly arsenal he possessed in that small room. But none of that put together was as potent as his favorite, his ultimate weapon. And an hour later, Cloud had still not found it. He flopped to his knees, surrounded by tools of death, and prayed to the high heavens that it was not Tifa who had taken Ultima Weapon out for a spin. Tifa and her maniacal tendencies towards the dramatic when it came to matters of the heart like this....who knew what she could do. But then... a glint caught his eyes. Behind a the door which he had so roughly shoved aside, a flash of silver, a spark of light. Cloud pawed his way over there, pulling aside the door and peering aside.  
Cloud trembled.   
_Blades_.   
Yes that was Ultima Weapon, jammed behind the door, it's slight scuffs not marring its glory.  
Yes, that was Ultima Weapon, and yes, it was, indeed, lying in a pool of day-old-blood. 

Tifa sat in the exact same position in her room as she had been sitting all afternoon and all night. She had barely moved since Vincent had came to her and gently pressed this gun that now lay in her lap into her hands. _Barret, and then Cid_, Vincent had told her. _Any one of us could be next,_ Vincent had told her. Really, if she was just to pull the trigger once, it could save the lives of so many.   
Back and forth she rocked, both her body and her opinion swaying back and forth in some sort of comforting fetal movement, in a pattern reminiscent of the waves. She should, she shouldn't. Forwards, and backwards. _He loves me, he loves me not_. It is right, it is wrong, it is right, it is wrong, it is right, it is wrong, it is....left.  
What would be left, Tifa wondered, if she were to carry out Vincent's job? Certainly not her free conscience, but perhaps she would gain a freer soul, self-respect. But for what in return? Perhaps she would be losing Cloud: a lover, someone she had been with for so long and whom she knew so well she could tell him his every movement before it happened. More than that, most definitely, she would be losing a friend, and though a friend who she fought with and sometimes more than often hated, resented, was, nevertheless a friend.  
But oh, to be free of Cloud's curses, his mistakes, his many, many stumbles. How much more...simple her life would be. Tifa picked up the gun. She had made her decision. 

  
  
"And every decision," said Vincent. "Every action, requires...sacrifice." 

"Wha-what?" stammered Aeris, backing away from the steadily approaching man in the cloak. "Sacrifice, what do you mea-"  
"For the greater good," said Vincent, "Sacrifices must be made. Those mistakes made must be undone. A bone that has been set wrong must be broken again to be set right."   
"Vincent," said Aeris, now truly crying, sniffling her tears as if trying to hind them in the sprinkling rain. "Vincent, please, I don't understand what you're talking about."   
"I am sorry," said Vincent as he doggedly approached," For the sacrifices that must be made, but the sacrifices must be made. One must be traded for a hundred. For the one I am truly, achingly apologetic."  
"Vincent!" Aeris screamsobbed at him, now backpedalling in a frenzy, screaming his name in the hopes to wake him from his deadly reverie.   
"The one," Vincent repeated as he closed in on her, "Must be discarded for the lives of the hundred. Some things are satiable only by blood."  
"Vincent please," Aeris continued sobbing. "Please, don't tell me I'm that one you're talking about, please..."  
Vincent bowed his head, his footsteps continuing to clang forward like a pursuing death knoll. _Virginal, praying, overhanging cliff, holy, blood, blades_. "You are the sacrifice." And a traditional one at that.  
"No," sniffed Aeris, weakly denying. "No, no, please, no."   
"Yes," replied Vincent, and that was enough. Suddenly, the footsteps stopped, and ever so slowly, he started to raise his gun.  
She turned tail and ran. Flowers dropping discarded as she went, hair coming undone from its braid, green eyes anything but serene, pink dress muddied to unidentifiable color, Aeris ran, not the image of the flower girl, but the long-gone and faded picture of one, hardly believable as the girl she once was. 

Cloud sat and stared at the floor in front of him. Day old blood, he could tell, because it was dark and slightly congealed, dirtying all that it touched. Dirty, Cloud shuddered. So incredibly dirty. He couldn't stand to get an inch nearer to it. But though he sat a good foot and a half away from the mess he so loathed, a shiver ran up his spine as heard a wet drip, drip, drip right beside him. Deeper, deeper, Cloud's breaths steadily grew faster to the point of hyperventilation, his eyes glowing the same blue as the dead, dead computer monitor in the room next. _Fatal Error_. He looked down at his hand and saw that he cupped a fistful of blood. "Dirty, dirty!" Cloud howled, shaking his hand free of the repulsive liquid only to discover that his hand, his whole palm had withered away into the rotted gnarled mess of a mummy or a corpse. Falling away in revulsion, yet incapable of escaping something that was, undeniably, part of his own body, Cloud fell upon the drawers behind him once more, tearing through the contents in a state of complete dread until he came upon a black leather glove, one of Tifa's old ones perhaps. Quickly, he pulled it on and around his wasted hand, looking about him to make sure no one had seen. No one had. With a deep sigh of relief, Cloud slumped against the wall... just in time to hear a crash. 

Aeris panted, sprinting into the dark rooms behind 7th Heaven feeling as if her lungs were on fire. Behind her, she could still hear the steadily pursuing footsteps in the eerie corridors of Midgar, always following, following, gun at his side. Already weakened by days of fear and confusion, Aeris' legs finally gave way immediately after she passed through the threshold of the house, her frail body falling to the ground with a dull thump. Crouched on the ground on her hands, on her....oh God, on her knees, hands before her, unable to turn around and see what was coming behind her...anything could come behind her...  
_Clank._ The footsteps kept coming.  
A sword, a gun, a man, _blades_, if only she had the strength to turn around and look...to protect herself...  
_Clank.  
_God, he was so close, she could already feel the cold metal pressing into her back now, he was so close, she could hear his breathing, the way his cloak swished in the deathly frigid breeze, she could...  
_Clank._ The footsteps stopped. _  
_"The job must be completed. The chapter must be closed," said Vincent quietly, apologetically.   
"No," cried Aeris. "No, no, no-"  
Thunk. Vincent's body fell to the floor and slumped against the wall, unconscious. Aeris slowly, slowly turned around.   
Tifa stood in front of her, one hand on her hip, one hand on the pistol butt she had used to knock Vincent out from behind. "Hey there," she said, with a wry grin. 

A door creaked, opened by a gloved hand. "What's going on in here," Cloud's wavery voice ventured as he stepped into the room to see Tifa holding a gun, Aeris collapsed on the floor, and Vincent knocked on in the shadows. "What..what the hell...?"   
Aeris looked up at him, absinthe eyes glistening. "Oh Cloud..." she cried hushedly, then wobbled to her feet and fell into his arms, clinging to him tightly. "Please Cloud," she whispered. "Please don't let me go. I'm too scared. Please don't ever let me go." Cloud's hand, his own sullied soul hidden by the glove, lifted to stroke the girl's tangled hair. "I won't, Aeris," he said, holding her close. "I won't." 

Tifa stood and observed this scene from the doorway, the savior, yet the untouched, the unloved. Her hand tightened around the handle of Quicksilver. 

In the dark corner, Vincent's eyelashes fluttered briefly in his catatonic state. 

And then... 

Click.   
The resonant sound of a loading gun sounded in the fleeting silence.  
"Cloud!" Aeris' voice ripped out of her throat. "Cloud watch out!"   
To her dear protector's blonde head, by his azure eyes so wide in utmost confusion and turmoil, was held the cold, cruel silver barrel of a gun.   
"Put...put down the ...." Cloud swallowed, and enveloped by his fear, could speak no more.   
Aeris, the forever watcher, shook with sympathetic terror. Her green eyes took in all. She saw Cloud's sweating scalp, the way the long barrel of the gun pressed into the flesh, saw his hands motionlessly seeking a weapon and finding nothing, saw-.... wait.  
Upon further inspection, Aeris realized the gun held to Cloud's head was Death Penalty.   
_muddy  
_Vincent...Vincent's gun was the one pointing at Cloud. But Vincent was knocked out in the corner. Vincent's hand was lying limp next to his sodden body. So who...  
_muddy  
_Aeris's eyes flew to Cloud's frightened optics, and slowly, slowly trailed down to his temple, down the long metal length of the gun. Aeris saw the gun handle, Aeris saw that the gun was loaded. Aeris saw knuckles gripping tight, whitened with the effort and a finger dancing dangerously on the trigger.  
_death.  
_And Aeris saw her own hand holding the gun. 

_  
_[sordidstory@yahoo.com  
][1]www.sordidstory.cjb.net

   [1]: mailto:sordidstory@yahoo.com



	10. Dawn of the Wallflowers

New Page 1

...tendencies. (a story about obsession)  
10: Dawn of the Wallflowers

  
...

"I...I..." Aeris stared at her own hand on the handle of the gun that was pointed towards Cloud's head. A single droplet of sweat oozed down his scalp, leaking down the barrel of the gun, moist and tense.   
"Aeris..." Cloud's voice ventured, drawn out and slow. Disbelieving. "What're you doing..." 

_My girl, my girl, don't lie to me..._

_tell me where did you sleep last night...._

She did not know.  
"I..." she tried to say, but she did not know who she referred to when she said that "I". Green eyes flicked to brown and they were full of confusion. Flicked to red and they were full of sad knowledge. Flicked to blue and they were a fatal error screen and they cried for her. Aeris saw her own hand struggling not to kill the one person in the whole world who loved her, then she let out a little sigh of a cry, as if struck. She dropped the gun, and fled out the door.  


***********  


In the resulting silence, Vincent said, "You have to kill her."  
And Cloud said, "No." Then he said, "No, no, no, what the hell are you talking about Vincent, you're insane, you're crazy. Stop messing with my f*cking head!!!"  
And Tifa just hung her head down low and said nothing. Vincent had explained to her his reasoning. She, living in the land of the informed, still wavered on the border of indecision.  
  
"You have to kill her," said Vincent very calmly and methodically. "Or else she will kill us all and many more. She is the perpetrator of the plague of death that has visited upon this city. You have to kill her or she will murder innocent after innocent after innocent until you do. The blood will all be on your hands, Cloud, so you must do your duty. The job must be done. The book must be closed." His red eyes narrowed. "Do not shirk your responsibilities. It is the hero's duty to undertake the painful and unwanted."  
"I can't..." said Cloud, in a tight whisper.  
"You can," said Vincent.  
"I won't..." said Cloud, louder.  
"But you must," said Vincent.   
  
"You don't understand, you bastard, you don't understand!" shouted Cloud, his eyes shut, his fists clenched, his blood boiling.   
"I don't understand..." Vincent laughed. Not bitterly. The peals of laughter seemed almost...merry. "I don't understand," Vincent repeated, giggling. "I...I don't understand... ahaha...aha..." He laughed and he laughed and he laughed and then he put his head in his hands and when he looked up he was crying.  
Tifa's hand flew to her mouth. "Vin...Vincent, what's wr- What...?" Her amber eyes radiated confusion as her friend's body buckled and folded in half and contorted to form the shadow of a man.  
  
Vincent sobbed, he howled, he cried, and he let out years and years, rivers and streams and oceans of pain, sweeping, pulsing, splashing waves of pain. And awash in this bloody sea, Cloud strained backwards from Vincent's clawing hands, his clinging arms, his once-dignified arms wrapped around Cloud's legs as if he were to be swept out to hell if he didn't hold on tight. Cloud fell backwards, revulsed, fearful, and Vincent spoke, Vincent spoke in a voice that Cloud didn't recognize: a voice that was not Vincent the monster, Vincent the strong and silent, Vincent the reserved and composed. This was Vincent before the gunshot, Vincent Valentine the Turk, the man, the soul behind the image. This soul was hurting. This soul's pale underused lips fell open and let a story of dark ruin fall from his mouth all atumble. And Cloud gaped.

"I don't understand? You think I don't understand, Cloud? Do you know who you are talking to, Cloud? Do you think I didn't try everything in my power to get her back? Everything I could to revive her, just to see her once more? To touch her once more? I did, Cloud, I did! I tried everything. I have cried out a million years with every cell in my body for Lucrecia. I have searched every haunted disheveled path of hell to look for a way back to her. You think I never walked down yours, Cloud? You think you're so damn special?  
I've seen that materia. It's purple, isn't it, Cloud. Purple with disgusting spiderweb patterns across it? Oh yes, I've seen it. I've felt it. I've even cast with it. No, don't look at me like that, I'm not lying. I have. I cast with that damned gnarled materia, the Monkey's Paw materia, some call it. Monkey's Paw because...it's gnarled like... "

Cloud's rotted hand tensed underneath the black leather glove.

"How the f*ck do you think my hand got the way it did, Cloud? You think Hojo put this claw on me? You think I wanted it there? You think I was born like this? I had to have this claw put in when that demon's spawn materia took my hand. Yes, it bleeds a little first, then it just withers...it wrinkles and turns into the mummified remnants of a corpse's hand. A revival doesn't just create life... it takes life. To cast, it takes life from your hand. And to continue...it takes life from others. Through...its subject."

Cloud's eyes widened to frightening proportions, the blue threatening to leak out in panic. "No...no, it's not true..."

"You know what I mean, don't you Cloud? Its subject. Lucrecia did the same thing. She killed a town full of people when I brought her back. I had no idea for the longest time- she was..." Vincent choked. "She was my 'Crecia, my baby, my darling. She could never kill anyth-" His eyes bled tears. "She could never hurt a fly and here she was, hacking away at everything she could get to. Children and puppies and mothers and..."

Cloud shook his head, dazed.

"...and it was all my fault. I had brought her back. I had made her the monster. Created another Sephiroth. I had forced her to be a murderer and tainted her lovely, lovely name. Lucrecia said that Jenova wouldn't let her rest. She had it all wrong. It was me that wouldn't let her rest." He looked up. "You didn't bring back your love, you brought back the skeleton shadow of your love with something dark and hideous inside."

Cloud continued shaking his head, for that was all he could do. He couldn't move. Speak. Every muscle in his body was sealed together and stuck to the ground. "Cloud?" Tifa's soft voice, worried, permeated through the terrible ringing in his ears. "Cloud?" Her hands were on his chest, comforting. 

"NO!" he screamed. "NO! IT'S NOT TRUE! IT'S A LIE! IT CAN'T BE TRUE!" he screamed, and he shoved Tifa, hard, away from him, throwing her body against a wall with a dull thump. Then, leaving her unconscious body lying there, he ran away, frenetically, tearing at his own hair with his own withered hand.

"IT'S A LIE! IT'S A LIE! IT'S A LIEEEEEEE!" 

The halls echoed, the sound of pain repeating and repeating and repeating.

And on the ground, in a puddle of someone else's tears, the Vincent of the present blinked blindly and sadly at nothing in particular, and said, "I knew it would happen again."

  
*

"I believe you," came the hushed, soft voice beside Vincent, an arm about his shoulders, silken hair brushing his face. "I believe you, and I'm sorry."   
Vincent looked up at Tifa and smiled sadly. "Thank you," he said. "And now...what route do you walk?"  
"The one I always walk," she said quietly, looking down at the floor and wringing her hands. "I'm going to go after him. Follow him." She looked up into his eyes. "I love him. No matter what he does to me, I love him. I can't do anything else. You understand?"  
He did.  
"And you?" she asked. "What route do you walk?" she copied his words.  
"The one I always walk," he said, blind eyes staring off into nothing. "I walk alone."  
She nodded knowingly, pulled him to her in one last emphatic embrace, and pressed Death Penalty firmly into his hands. Then, Tifa stood up and walked to the weapons room, pulling out daggers and tape and gloves to arm herself. While wrapping the white tape firmly about her knuckles, she heard scuffles in the hall.   
"Leaving without saying goodbye?" she said, without looking up from her preparations.   
"Our routes will cross again," he said simply, and Tifa returned to strapping on her gloves, knowing full well that when she looked up, Vincent would be gone.

Cloud ran blindly, tears streaking his pained face-  
Aeris ran blindly, tears streaking her terrified face-  
His feet did not obey her bidding, locked and stiff with the shackles of guilt and denial-  
Her feet did not obey her bidding, locked and stiff with the shackles of confusion and horror at self-discovery-  
He fell.  
She fell.  
At the entrance to the maze that began the City of the Ancients, he stumbled and scraped his knee, and like a child, began to cry-  
At the entrance to the cave that housed her beloved lake, she stumbled and fell to her knees, and out of habit, began to pray-  
In amazement, he found that there was someone to catch him, warm arms surrounding him and holding him to her chest, rocking him. He had never felt so safe, so needed, so warm-  
In pain, she found that for once there was no one to catch her, no warm fingers of her ancestors brushing her, comforting her, whispering to her in cooing, low voices likes the soft washing waves-  
He was slowly helped to his feet by loving hands; standing, he raised his head and saw the ever-loyal amber eyes of Tifa shining into his own-  
She heard footsteps behind her, and, nobody to help her to her feet, she stood up alone, by herself. Standing, she turned and saw the crimson eyes of Vincent staring blindly in her direction-  
"What are you doing here?" he asked, head on her shoulder, arms woven about her body-   
"What are you doing here?" she asked her innocent waif's voice-  
"I came to find you," she replied simply and affectionately. "I had to find you."-  
"I've come to find you," he said to her, stern and cold. "I've come to finish the job. I've come to put an end to you."-  
"I'm sorry," he was suddenly sobbing. "I'm so sorry for what I've done, I should've listened to you, you were right, I love you, you're all that matters, I'm sorry, Tifa, I'm sorry..."-  
"What have I done?" she was suddenly sobbing. "Who am I? Did I kill all those people in Midgar? Am I murderer? Why am I even here? Did I do something wrong? I'm so very sorry..."-  
"No..." she murmured into his ear. "It's alright, Cloud. That's all in the past now. I forgive you. I understand. "I'm here to help you undo it all."-  
"No," Vincent rumbled. "You've done nothing wrong. But you should not be here, and I'm here to help you go home."-  
She smiled at him, and he couldn't help but smile back, couldn't help but take her head in his hands and kiss her. He straightened and took her in his arms, clasped her tight for just one unreleasable moment-  
She smiled waveringly at him, and he couldn't help but smile back (for he could feel her warmth pulse through the room), and he walked, blindly, hesitantly towards her-  
They walked hand and hand towards the entrance to the cave and did not, could not see what was going to happen within-  
He walked, Death Penalty in hand, and blind-eyed, did not, could not see the blade that Aeris held in her hand-  
... An otherworldly presence clouding her consciousness, neither could she-

_My girl, my girl, don't lie to me...  
Tell me where did you...  
_Kill.  
_last night..._

Nobody, not even Aeris herself, saw the flower girl raise a blade, thin and scythe like, over her head and thrust it into the back of Vincent.  
Nobody, not even Aeris, saw the blade pierce through bone and flesh to appear on the other side.  
Nobody could see the event to notice the irony of the repeated incident as Vincent was stabbed, and he fell to his knees in a pool of his own blood. 

Nobody saw her do this...

But every one of them felt it

_(Authors note: apologies for the messiness)  
[http://www.sordidstory.cjb.net][1]_

   [1]: http://www.sordidstory.cjb.net



	11. Revolution

New Page 1

...tendencies. (a story about obsession)  
11: Revolution

"Though the pattern of death never repeats, it rings eternal. " said Vincent Valentine with a bitter laugh.  
Aeris smiled with clouded eyes, a smug smirk of a smile that was not hers but Jenova's. "Do not seek to cross me again," she said doubled, in the flower girl's voice and in the virus'.   
"Thrice," said Vincent wrly. "Once."   
Lucrecia.  
"Twice."  
Sephiroth.   
"They say third time's the charm."   
"Aeris!" Tifa and Cloud ran in and called to her, halted when they saw Vincent on the floor, the blood on her hands, the sword by her feet.   
"Aeris...?" Tifa repeated to the girl's back.  
Aeris' body leaned over and picked up the sword. Slowly, eerily, she turned around. "I'm not Aeris," she said with her mouth, her voice, but not her mind.   
Cloud set his jaw. "No," he said. "You aren't."  
He unsheathed his sword, and the end began.  
  
  
"The scene," said Vincent to his gory wound, "fragments here."

This is what they saw:

It was not one of those clean battles, those epic battles, those pretty heroic battles that you hear about in storybooks and movies. There was not one nicely aimed gunshot that ended the story, not one shove off a cliff or anything so untainted and simple. It was a hack and slash and gash fight, and Cloud had to make decision after decision to bring Ultima before him. It was not just Aeris he was fighting against, but also his compounded guilt, for he was doing exactly what he had let Sephiroth do to his Aeris so long ago as he used the keen metal edge of his blade to cut deep into her pale innocent flesh. 

It was not an easy fight, for Jenova did not want to let go of her newly formed puppet without a good brawl. Aeris's hands found a skill and grace that she had never felt before- a style of fighting comparable to...well...Sephiroth's. Tifa's fists slammed once and again, and again again with soft packs and "unghs" into Aeris' ribs. Finally, though, Cloud plunged his sword through her stomach, her spine, split, and it was all over.

Aeris' eyes did not clear. She did not see with her own eyes once more before she died. She just emmited a sort of _blades_ hissing sound, and fell to the ground, dusty. She decomposed before their eyes, returning to the rotted, waterlogged corpse-form she had inhabited before she was disturbed.

This is what she saw: 

The face of Cloud and he was thrusting his sword at her with a terrified, twisted expression. The fists of Tifa and her face, scrunched in worry, eyes shut in pain to what she was doing.  
And Vincent, slumped and bloody huddled in the doorway, looking at her with a blind piercing gaze that said, in no uncertain terms _"Go home..."_

And suddenly, there was that sharp, sharp coldness of _bladesbladesblades I-_ And she wanted to go to sleep so badly. Somewhere in the distance, rustling in the water, she could hear her mother, her grandmother, her grandmother's mother welcoming her, whispering to her, _Aeris...we miss you...Aeris...you belong with us...come back..._ and it was getting very dark and her skin started feeling very dark. 

Aeris went home.

_And will she not come again?  
And will she not come again?  
No, no, she is dead:  
Gone to thy death-bed:  
She never will come again._

This is what he saw: a chance.  
  
"If there's...if there's only a chance..."  
  
The blood was leaking. It was leaking out in pulsing gushes, red plasma flowing over and over in a thick, thick, waterfall, like burgundy velvet curtains tumbling, tumbling, tumbling down into nothingness.   
"Vincent?" ventured Tifa. She watched her friend stumble down the path into the cavern where the lake was. "Vincent, what are you doing?"  
Hesitantly, she walked a few steps towards him.  
"He knows what he's doing," said Cloud quietly. "Blind as he is, for once, he knows exactly where he's going."  
And Vincent did, his boots scuffling against the ground, doggedly digging in to bring his beaten body through the doorway as the blood splashed in beautiful red waves over the forearm he held to his stomach. He swayed as he walked, a rootless tree.  
"Oh God..." Tifa said in pain. "He's really..."  
Tifa watched and Tifa cried, and Tifa knew, too, where Vincent was going, and she silently whispered to him a goodbye. Then, as he disappeared through the doorway, she turned back to Cloud, and spoke to him over a twice-dead corpse. "And you? Do you know where you're going, now, Cloud?" Tifa asked her true love with sapphire tears in her eyes.   
Cloud stepped over the body in one sure step and took Tifa in his arms. He looked down at her, his own eyes dewy with tears, and pulled her to him in a kiss. "Whereever you want to go, Teef. From this day forth and forever, I'll go whereever you go."

Red, red, red. The world was a deathbed of red. Vincent stumbled and fell, coughed up a mouthful of thick black blood. But no-he couldn't stop here. He wouldn't stop until it ended; he wouldn't stop until ... Arms, trembling, convulsing with the effort, Vincent locked his elbows and pushed himself back up onto his feet. He walked staunchly forwards, swaying, dying, to the lake. Swallowing hard, he waded in and closed his eyes as the first soft wave broke against his knees. 

_Vincent, Vincent_ the voices cried, the waters whispered softly in his ears as he waded, deeper, deeper. Each gentle droplet of water kissed him in sympathy, in compassion to his great otherwordly pain. _Vincent, we understand, Vincent we're sorry_. 

Completely submerged, lake stained with his vermillion sin; seaweed wrapping around his ankles crying _Vincent_...  
Currents buoying him up, aiding him along his way-- he fell to his knees in the center of the lake. The tide washed away, ebbed with his life.

Vincent's downtrodden body relaxed, let the water's loving arms carry him away. "If there's only a chance," he said to himself. It was alright that his time on earth had ended- just as long as there was a chance. But God, he was dying, he knew it, he couldn't see, the world was fading away, the darkness closing in, his fingers, clutched tight about his consciousness, slowly loosened their grip... oh if there was anyone in Heaven or earth who had any love at all they would bless him with this one wish....Quick as the acceptance had come, the icy chill of fear slowly spread through his bones like a disease. What if... through the fighting and the blindness and the rage and the thousand year yearning...what if...god, he was so scared...what if there was no other side, no Lifestream, or worse...what if he saw the other side and found himself, once again....alone?

Then he saw the Lifestream, green, illuminate. The bells of a thousand mortal passings vibrated in his ears.   
And every cell in his body gathered together for one all-consuming cry--

_Floating in a watery waiting room._

_Swimming in a sea of green._

_Someday....._

_Someday....._

_17 years, and now..._

_someday soon...._

"Lucrecia?"

"...Vincent?"

END.


End file.
